Two weeks ago, Seattle hosted Americans for the Arts' 49th annual convention at the Washington State Convention & Trade Center. More than 1,200 arts leaders from across the nation came together under the theme of Arts in Sustainable Communities, an appropriate banner for our region and our time. Attendees participated in workshops on public art, arts education, civic engagement, advocacy, innovation and more. Conference participants also had many opportunities to explore the Seattle region through a series of "ArtVenture" tours. Our generous artists and cultural community rallied together to open their doors to our guests with warm welcomes and unique learning experiences. Leonard Forsman, chairman of the Suquamish Tribe, and the Suquamish Canoe Family Singers, opened the meeting with a blessing. We also heard from Mayor Greg Nickels, newly appointed president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors. The mayor outlined the conference's national arts and cultural platform as well as Seattle's commitment to the arts.

Despite the challenging economic climate, both local participants and out-of-town visitors were positively energized by the Seattle experience. The meeting solidified Seattle's standing as one of America's leading cities for arts and culture. We were also thrilled to see honors bestowed on Seattle Arts Commissioner Randy Engstrom and Seattle artist Buster Simpson. In addition, several recently completed public art projects were also recognized during Public Art year in Review.

For those of you who were unable to attend, Shelia Siden, director of development for Artist Trust, captured convention highlights on the Artist Trust Blog.

Filmmaker and 2008 CityArtist Jen Marlowe captures Gabriel Bol's return home to his village in Sudan after a 20-year absence.

Funding available for Seattle artists

The Office is accepting applications for the 2010 CityArtists Projects program. Individual artists working in visual, literary and film/media arts may apply. Funding awards range up to $10,000 for projects in 2010.

CityArtists Projects is an annual funding program that provides support to individual Seattle artists to conceive, develop and present new, in-progress or remounted works taken to the next stage. Projects must include a public presentation in the city. Funding is offered to artists in clusters of disciplines in the visual, media and literary arts and performing arts in alternate years.

Application deadline is Tuesday, Aug. 11. The online application and guidelines are available here.

Mayor announces 2009 Mayor's Arts Award recipients

Warren Dykeman, FULLNESS, is featured on the 2009 Bumbershoot Fine Arts Poster.

"Now, more than ever, we must show the value of the arts in our community. Arts and culture spur our economy and are vital to our quality of life in Seattle," said Nickels. "Collectively, this year's award recipients tell an extraordinary story and reflect the diversity of arts and culture in our city."

The recipients will be honored at the Mayor's Arts Awards ceremony, noon, Friday, Sept. 4 at Seattle Center's Northwest Court. The outdoor ceremony, which is free and open to the public, will also feature the official opening of Bumbershoot's Visual Arts Exhibits. The Festival's visual arts exhibits will open to the public a day early, with a free public preview from noon to 7 p.m., Sept. 4.

The new Seattle Center Skatepark pops with artist Perri Lynch's steep, blue glass skate ramp and colorful glass-panel fence. Seattle Center will host a grand opening celebration at the skatepark, 11 a.m., Saturday, July 11. The entrance to the skatepark is at Second Avenue and Thomas Street. Music, skateboard demonstrations, contests and giveaways are from noon to 4 p.m.

Lynch drew on the culture, action and aesthetics of skateboarding while working with the skatepark design team to conceive the artwork for the 10,000-square-foot skatepark. The skatepark features a plaza with ledges, stairs and transitions for all skill levels. Lynch digitally scanned the undersides of broken skateboards to create a colorful graphic collage of images in the thick laminated glass fence along Thomas Street.

Click here to learn more about the skatepark. The artwork design was commissioned with Seattle Center 1% for Art funds and administered by the Office.

View 42 artworks by 26 emerging Northwest artists at the Seattle Municipal Tower Gallery through Sept. 29. Join the artists for a reception, 4:30 to 6:30 p.m., Tuesday, July 14. Brief remarks are at 5:45 p.m.

The exhibition includes paintings, prints, photographs, sculpture and ceramics. The featured artworks are part of a larger recent purchase by Seattle City Light totaling 86 artworks by 56 artists. The rest of the artworks will be on display in a second exhibition opening in the gallery in October.

Seattle City Light's Portable Works Collection is exhibited throughout City Light's offices, engaging both employees and the public and creating an interesting and diverse work environment. The purchase was made possible with city 1% for Art funds.

Temporary artworks reflect on water, free performances this month

Mandy Greer, Mater Matrix Mother and Medium (installation in progress), 2009, fiber. Located at Camp Long in West Seattle. Photo by the artist.

Witness a 200-foot fiber "river" among the trees at Camp Long in West Seattle this month. To celebrate the splendor of Seattle's urban creeks, Mandy Greer invited the community to help create the elegant, crocheted artwork Mater Matrix Mother and Medium. Stop by Polliwog Pond to see Greer installing the artwork, 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., Tuesdays and Thursdays through July 9. Watch a free dance performance produced by Greer in collaboration with choreographer and dancer Zoe Scofield, 6:30 p.m., Thursday, July 16 near the pond.

Artist Stokley Towles traced the flow of our city's water through interviews with Seattle Public Utilities (SPU) employees. He shares his findings and explores local perceptions and behaviors around water use, its sources and conservation in the installation and playful performance artwork Waterlines in a trailer near the Volunteer Park Reservoir. Click here for the performance location, dates and times. Performances are free.

The two temporary public art projects are part of the series Water Calling, intended to raise public awareness of environmental stewardship, especially as it connects to SPU's work. The artworks are commissioned by the Office with SPU 1% for Art funds.

Film still from Waterway by Britta Johnson. Waterway is a stop-animation film about naturally filtering and cleaning water.

Chiro's fairy-tale style film follows a young girl who is transported to an underwater kingdom. Johnson's stop-animation film follows the journey of large drops of water. Robb's sci-fi-like images investigate the interface that tap water creates with nature and our homes. Sieczek's film marks the passage of water from sky to soil to stream to waterway. And Stevenson portrays water as a healing, symbolic, life-giving and redemptive force.

The films are part of the series Water Calling, intended to raise public awareness of environmental stewardship and Seattle Public Utilities' (SPU) work. The projects are commissioned by the Office with SPU 1% for Art funds.

Kennedy Center president to speak on arts during financial crisis

Michael M. Kaiser

Arts leaders and advocates, mark your calendars. Michael M. Kaiser, president of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, will conduct free arts leadership symposia on making the case for the arts in the current economic climate the week of August 17. The symposia will be in Seattle and Tacoma. Specific dates and locations are to be determined. Stay tuned to the Office's August eNews for more details.

Looking to lease, buy or renovate an arts space? We have some tips. The Office teamed up with the city's Department of Planning and Development to produce a check list of items individual artists and organizations should consider before taking the plunge. In city lingo, the document is called a Client Assistance Memo or CAM. In the CAM, titled Arts Space: Important Topics for Buying or Leasing a Space, subjects covered include project planning; aspects of good design and successful spaces; funding considerations; zoning and land use regulations; and navigating permits, building codes and inspections.

Five Seattle-area public art projects and three Seattle artists took awards for public art at the 2009 Americans for the Arts annual convention held in Seattle, June 18 - 20.

The public art projects are among 40 selected as the most successful and innovative of more than 300 entries nationwide. The Public Art Year in Review is the only national award that specifically recognizes public art projects.

Two projects managed by the Office were recognized. Jenny Heishman'sWater Mover is a rain-activated metal sculpture at Fremont's A.B. Ernst Park. Kumi Yamashita created Pathway—a silhouetted figure of light that appears to be walking through a passage—for the Michael Hildt Memorial Conference Room at Seattle City Light's offices in the Seattle Municipal Tower.

Two projects managed by 4Culture also were honored. Carol DePelecyn's two artworks for the Shoreline Recycling and Transfer Station, ReTire (with Steve McGehee) and Terra Firma (with Dale Stammen), reflect waste, recycling and conservation practices. Sheila Klein'sColumnseum at the Roosevelt and Greenlake Park-and-Ride in Seattle brightens the forest of columns beneath Interstate-5 with paint applied to columns.

Portland artist Horatio Hung-Yan Law created Gilded Bowl Column for Asian Counseling and Referral Service's new headquarters in South Seattle. Law's artwork is a 16-foot cylindrical form, suspended in the atrium. Artist and Seattle Arts CommissionerDan Corson was also recognized for his Empyrean Passage in West Hollywood, Calif, and Seattle artist Lorna Jordan was honored for her Origami Garden in Tempe, Ariz. Seattle artist Buster Simpson received the 2009 Public Art Network Award for his innovative contributions and exemplary commitment and leadership in public art.

"Randy exemplifies the qualities needed to lead and advance the arts. His extraordinary work with the Youngstown Cultural Arts Center shows the power the arts have to transform a community," said Bob Lynch, president and CEO of Americans for the Arts.

For more than 10 years, Engstrom has been a passionate and accomplished advocate for the arts and community development. In 2005, he helped launch Youngstown, a multimedia/multidisciplinary community space in West Seattle that offers youth and community members access to arts, technology and cultural resources. He helped establish the Arts Leadership Lab, a group born out of AFTA's Creative Conversations series, into a network of local arts leaders in Seattle. Engstrom co-chaired the Cultural Overlay District Advisory Committee (CODAC), which recommended to the City Council strategies to preserve and foster affordable arts and cultural spaces. And to boot, he was elected mayor of Burning Man's Black Rock City last year!

City Hall plaza to sizzle with free summer concerts

The Jelly Rollers will perform on City Hall's outdoor plaza July 30. Photo courtesy of the artists.

Enjoy homegrown music at City Hall this summer. The outdoor plaza will sizzle with a series of free lunchtime concerts by leading Seattle-area performers, Thursdays from noon to 1:30 p.m. through Sept. 17 (except for Sept. 10). The lineup includes bombagrunge band Manooghi Hi, blues and roots rock band The Jelly Rollers, R&B songstress Toni Hill and the quirky a cappella of The Bobs.

For the complete summer lineup and weather updates, visit the Web site.

The Office holds the Seattle Presents concert series year-round at City Hall. Audience members can pick up a free Seattle Presents Volume Three MP3 download card, featuring a dozen live recordings by past Seattle Presents performers. After downloading music, listeners can plant the cards and watch wild flowers grow.

Model T's cross-country trek to finish in Seattle, celebrating A-Y-P

Model T's cross the country to celebrate the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition centennial celebration. Photo taken in June in Hannibal, Mo.

Fifty-four Model T Fords will soon end their month-long cross-country journey in Seattle. The trek from New York to Seattle reenacts the 1909 Ocean-to-Ocean race that publicized the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific (A-Y-P) Exposition, Seattle's first world's fair. The Model T expedition is part of this year's A-Y-P Exposition centennial celebration managed by the Office in collaboration with nearly 60 community partners.

Logging about 200 miles a day, the Model T's are stopping in many cities along the way. Follow the Fords on the Ocean-to-Ocean Blog. The cars will arrive at the University of Washington's Drumheller Fountain between 10 and 11 a.m., Sunday, July 12. Mayor Greg Nickels and UW President Mark Emmert along with the Ballard Sedentary Souza Band will greet the drivers at the finish line. The Fords will follow the original race route into town, driving through Renton, up Rainier Avenue and along Lake Washington Boulevard. Following their arrival at UW, the cars will then travel to downtown Seattle driving along Fairview, Westlake and Fifth avenues to Interstate-5.

Bastille Day, Hispanic SeaFair at Seattle Center in July

The Young Shakespeare Workshop's 2006 performance of a Midsummer's Nights Dream.